Topic Review 2

Practical questions about the procedures​

​Cristina is eight years old and has ADH (Attention Deficit with Hyperactivity).

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She is still is uncapable of studying for 20 minutes in a row. Most of the times she can do it for about 15 minutes.

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​If we start the behavior shaping technique asking her to study for 45 minutes...

In behavior shaping, we need to start with the amount of behavior that SHE IS ALREADY ABLE TO PERFORM.

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​So we are going to start by reinforcing her for studying for 15 minutes.

We started to reinforce Cristina for studying for 15 minutes in a row.

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​Now she is perfectly capable of doing it, so we are going to move to the next step.

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From now on, I am going to reinforce her for studying for one hour.

We have reinforced Cristina for studying for 15 minutes, then for 20 minutes, then for 30 minutes, and so on.

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However, since my final objective is for her to study for 90 minutes, the reinforcers I am giving her for the successive approximations are going to be smaller than the one I will give her for the final objective.

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It doesn't matter how far we are from the final desired behavior. We need to reinforce each of the steps EQUALLY, as if it was the final step.

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​If Cristina has managed to study for 40 minutes, the reinforcer is going to be as big as if she had mastered studying for 90 minutes.

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​EACH OF THE STEPS NEED TO BE REINFORCED AS IF THEY WERE THE FINAL GOAL.

We have reinforced Cristina for studying for 15 minutes, then for 20 minutes, then for 30 minutes, and so on.

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Now, we are in the step of reinforcing Cristina for studying for 30 minutes.

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John sometimes gets very frustrated when playing with his classmates. In this situations, he would loose his temper, yell and hit everyone around him.

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His teacher has decided to implement the time out procedure with him.

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Every time John is sent to time out, he throws away anything he finds, cries and insults the teacher. Should we add extra time out because he has performed such behaviors?

Every time John is sent to time out, he throws away anything he finds, cries and insults the teacher. Should we add extra time out because he has performed such behaviors?

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​NO

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​The amount of time has to be proportionate to the age of the student. Mildly inappropriate behaviors such as insulting or throwing toys away are to be expected and we should just ignore them.

Also, while he is in Time Out, he tries to interact with the teacher and other students, either by calling them, crying, or threatening them.

​What should we do and what should we explain the other students?

Also, while he is in Time Out, he tries to interact with the teacher and other students, either by calling them, crying, or threatening them.

​What should we do and what should we explain the other students?

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​That during time out we should not interact with the student.

​For each description of the case, figure out which is the wrong part of the Token Economy that made it inefficient.

Laura's parents are divorced.

​Laura's mother has implemented a Token Economy with her so she will carry out a routine after school. She gets a token for every task she does (doing her homework, tidying up her room, doing the dishes after lunch...). When she gets five tokens, she can exchange it for an hour with the Ipad.

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​Laura's father, on the other hand, lets her play with her Ipad no matter what for the amount of time that she wants.

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After a while, Laura stops doing the tasks.

When implementing the Token Economy, kids should preferrably not be able to obtain the back-up reinforcer by any other means different than the behavior we are trying to increase/to teach.

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​If Laura can obtain the back-up reinforcer (playing with the Ipad) without doing her tasks at home, she will not be motivated to do those tasks.

Daniel's parents are trying to implement a Token economy at home.

​They would give him Tokens that he can exchange for anything he wants, but the behaviors that allow him obtain such tokens are not clear for him.

Daniel needs to know what behaviors he is expected to perform. If I change the behaviors from one day to another, or we say it just once and expect the kid to remember it, the Token Economy will most likely fail.

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It is better if we write them down, or have it shown with pictures, so Daniel is perfectly capable to look at them at any time.

​Maria's parents have started a token economy at home to correct some of her bad behaviors. She gets a token for "not watching TV", "not touching her brother's belongings", "not bothering the dog..."

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​Focusing our attention only on eliminating the unwanted behaviors and not on encouraging those behaviors that we need to happen more often is a very common mistake.

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Token economy should focus on enhacing the adecquate behavior that we want the kid to learn.

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​For example: it is easier to give a token for the behavior "raising my hand and then speaking in class" than to give a token for the behavior "not interrupting the teacher".

​Ana's parents implement the Token Economy at home depending on if they come tired from work or not.

​Token Economy must be consistent. If we pre-decide to implement it every evening after school, we need to implement it every evening after school. It cannot depend on our mood, or our tiredness.

​Andy has problems when studying for more than half an hour, so normally he doesn't finish all of his homeworks. Also, he struggles a lot to keep his room tidy, folding his clothes and put them into the wardrobe, etc.

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Since the beginning of the Token economy, his parents give him only one token for doing all the tasks: doing all his homework, having his room perfectly tidy, puting his clothes inside the washing machine, folding all of his clothes and putting them perfectly in place.

​Andy's parents have WAY TOO DEMANDING with him.

He definetly will not be able to perform all of those task since the first day,

and if he is not able to perform all of those tasks, he is not getting any Token, and if he is not getting any tokens he is not able to exchange it for any back-up reinforcer.

If we are too demanding from the beginning, we will not reinforce the behaviors. And if we do not reinforce the behaviors, the frequency will not be increased.

​In a class with 15 kids, I am only implementing the Token Economy with Rosa. The rest of the kids have started laughing at her because she is the only one getting tokens, they call her things like baby and spoiled.

After a while, Rosa stops doing anything in order to earn the tokens.

​Without realising it, we have created a situation where the other kids are punishing her behaviors.

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If Rosa is specially problematic, and we want to work on reinforcing a specific group of behaviors with her (raising her hand before talking, doing the activities in class, remain sitting for 45 minutes...) we would better implement the token economy with the whole classroom (anyway these are behaviors that all of the class should perform).

​Robin doesn't specially enjoy reading.

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The back-up reinforcer his parents have chosen for his token economy is reading time with his siblings for 40 minutes after dinner.

​The back-up reinforcer NEEDS TO BE A REINFORCER.

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If I choose something that the kid doesn't like, that is not a reinforcer, so it doesn't work.

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How do I fix this?

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Miss Laura has started a Token economy in class. Due to lack of time, she did not design the tokens herself, she found the tokens online, printed them and started delivering them as usual.

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​After a while, she realises that the kids have more tokens that they should...

The kids are falsifying the tokens. They just photocopy them at home and exchange them for the back-up reinforcers whenever they want to.

The class of the Lions have done great with the Token Economy. However, since the academic year is about to end, miss Lucia finishes the token economy from one day to another.

​Without the token economy, the kids start to missbehave again.

Fading of the Token Economy is a very delicate phase and we need to pay it as much attention as when implementing the Token Economy.